


Cheat

by Snegurochka



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-05-08
Updated: 2005-05-08
Packaged: 2017-10-05 23:50:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snegurochka/pseuds/Snegurochka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus knows Sirius is still trying to recover, but it's hard not to want. Especially when someone else is offering.</p><p>~10,000 words. NC-17. Character death (canon), adultery. Thanks to Guernica and the realreview team for the beta work. May 2005.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cheat

The first time it happens, Sirius is upstairs with the hippogriff. You are sitting at the kitchen table, avoiding a pile of dishes that you swore to Molly she could leave in your hands. He sweeps in like a nightmare, so sudden you're not prepared, his shadow so black it's like the devil himself has paid you a visit, and you shiver at your sudden proximity to that mouth, those hands, _that mouth_.

"Forget something?" you mutter, barely looking up.

"No," he answers. Later, you will wonder if he stoppered that confidence in a bottle hidden in his robes, tasting a few drops before he came in. It's the only explanation, really. You look up to find that greasy hair falling into his face, that repulsive complexion gleaming, those fierce eyes pinning you to the spot.

A thought passes through your head that the man is standing in your kitchen leering at you, and you should look away in disgust. You should tell him to leave, before Sirius finds him here and rips his balls off for daring to _leer_ at you like this. You should tell him that he is a slimy bastard, and to fuck off and never come back.

There are a lot of things you should do. Holding his gaze in what you think is defiance, but which is probably only coming across as reciprocal _leering_, is not one of them.

He steps towards you, ignoring your defiant stare, and reaches out a hand. His thumb brushes over your bottom lip in a gesture at once tender and full of meaning, and your intended protest dies in your throat. He lets the soft pad of his thumb linger against your parched lips, as if he knows you haven't tasted what he's offering in god knows how long, and as he cradles your chin with his index finger, the seconds of this moment stretch into years in your clouded mind.

He pulls away with the same smooth confidence with which he approached, and the defiance in your return stare has turned to curiosity, wonder, and urgent possibility. No! _Not_ possibility – curiosity, wonder, and disgust. How _repulsive_, that he should think he can touch you like that. Your gaze turns to intense dislike.

That revolting, sallow-skinned, greasy-haired _bastard_. How dare he come in here, with those eyes on you and all the innuendo of some Wizard Lothario in that thumb, which is now resting with maddening innocence at his side, as though it never came anywhere near you. You should have the good sense to be appalled at yourself, and the way your racing heart refuses to heed your brain's call to _calm the fuck down_, but you realise with slow horror that you are so hard you can't spare much thought for your outrage.

"When you get tired of putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again…" he drawls, leaving the offer unfinished, the invitation unspoken. He is gone a moment later, and only then are you able to tear your eyes away from him.

~~~~~

 

Humpty-Dumpty. You have no idea where he has learned of this Muggle personage, but it is apt, and once it is lodged in your brain you can't get it out. Humpty-Dumpty: glorious once, everyone's favourite, until he fell off the wall and broke into a million pieces, and no one could put him back together again – not all the king's horses, and sure as hell not all the king's men. Lord knows you tried. Humpty-Dumpty, the shattered reminder of defeat incarnate, the arrogant prat who thought he could walk all over that bloody wall and never fall, who thought _he_ could be the hero, the first to escape the fortress without a scratch.

Twelve years in prison, with only a band of soul suckers for company, retreating into the emotional state of an abandoned canine to preserve his sanity, and everyone wonders why his social skills aren't a bit more acceptable these days – why he will go weeks not speaking at all, then rage at anyone who asks him to pass the salt. He expects you to understand, though. You are the only one who is capable of understanding him, and he needs you more than ever before. The hollow eggshell cracked quicker, and more thoroughly, than anyone would have thought possible.

He's across the room now, grooming the hippogriff's wings, and as you stand in the doorway watching him, you almost expect to see jagged pieces of eggshell, or dripping blots of yolk all over his robes. He might be saner than anyone else who lived through what he did, but it was still quite the tumble from his perch on that stupid wall.

"Come to bed," you say, trying to sound alluring. It's not quite part of your natural tone of voice, and you have to work at it.

He looks up at you and smiles, that toothy, fake grin he trots out when Harry visits. You hate that he thinks he needs to use it on you. "Oh, hey, Moony. I'll be there in a bit, yeah? Just- just give me a couple of minutes here. You go ahead."

This is his standard answer lately. Somewhere in the recovery, the fucking broken egg has decided it doesn't like to be touched. You try again. "You look good tonight," you say in your most seductive voice, walking up behind him and running a hand down his arm. "Sure you don't want to join me?"

"Mm." He leans back against you, and you wrap your arms around him, biting at the back of his neck. "You're insatiable, aren't you?" He forces a laugh but does not turn around, or encourage you, and you know enough not to push him.

You hold him for another moment, then silently back away. You know it's hard for him. You know what they did to him in prison. You know he doesn't trust anyone anymore. Except you – he still trusts you. You know you have to be patient, that he will come around, that things will be just like they used to be soon, soon. Any day now, you're sure of it. You can wait it out; you can handle it. You love him, after all, and he would wait for you.

~~~~~

 

The second time, you're prepared. It's late, and he should be gone; the meeting is over. He won't leave after meetings lately; he idles, talking to Albus in low tones, watching you out of the corner of his eye, waiting for the others to say their goodbyes, to leave you and Sirius alone. But Sirius never lingers; he listens patiently at the meetings, then heads straight upstairs, making excuses about Buckbeak.

You've long since learned to accept the hippogriff as your main competition, and you've understood for some time now that the hippogriff has won. In a way, you fear actually being left alone with Sirius, because when you're alone, you need to confront the fact that things aren't like they used to be, no matter how hard you try to pretend otherwise. More recently, you suspect that the one who keeps lingering after meetings like a prowling animal knows this about you, but you figure you had better check, to be sure.

"What do you want from me?" you ask, as he leans against the kitchen counter, watching you. You don't mean to sound dramatic about it, but that's the way it comes out.

He seems to think this is a humourous question, and you are terrified for a moment that he might laugh. There would not be a more frightening sound in the world, you're sure of it. He raises those awful eyebrows. "_From_ you?" he drawls.

You're annoyed. "It was a reasonable question. You heard it correctly."

"Mm." He steps closer. "What do I want _from_ you…" he repeats, the syllables swirling lazily over his tongue.

You're still annoyed, and now even more so, because your throat has gone dry and you are surprised to find you have acquired – by sheer accident – that low, alluring voice you try without success to achieve with Sirius. "That's what I asked."

He's behind you now, and you're relieved to be sitting down and not forced to look at him, but also appalled at what his proximity is doing to you. You open your mouth to speak again but no words come out, only a startled gasp that you never, ever intended. You close your eyes in order to get your control back, and wonder how his hands came to rest on your shoulders. No, not rest – they're moving, with an aching stealth over your shoulders and neck, then gliding into the open collar of your shirt.

"What do I… want…" he breathes, somehow unfastening the next button of your shirt and letting those hands drift lower, and as his flat palms push down your bare chest, your head falls back into him of its own accord, your eyes closed and your body alive under the kind of touch you haven't felt in ages. You sense the growl building low in your throat, and behind your closed lids it's Sirius's hands that are doing this to you, Sirius's touch that is making your cock harden and your basest desires awaken.

You grip the table and will those hands lower, and as they slide across your nipples you want nothing more than to grab both wrists, flip their owner around, push him hard into that table, and _fuck him senseless_. Your cock throbs at the thought, and you're quite sure that suppressed growl has broken through after all. You open your eyes and fall back to reality with a thud. This is not Sirius, and this is not a man you can ever, _ever_ fuck senseless.

You remember with a twist of your stomach exactly who this is, and you're sure you can sense the sneer of victory on his face as his fingers retreat, by the same path they came, but you'll be damned if you're going to let him walk out of here thinking he's taken something from you. You sit bolt upright and your hand flies up to circle his wrist before he can pull away. You don't turn around.

"You can't," is all you can think to say, and it's wrong because you can _hear_ him smirking again; he still thinks he's won.

"_I_ can't?" he asks, and at last you turn your head to face him, releasing his wrist. "Or _you_ can't?"

You blink, realising that the normal movement of air in and out of your lungs has become a much more laboured task than before, and you can't _believe_ this is such a difficult question to answer. In another second you feel the draft from his swirling robes, and when you look up again, he is gone.

What he wants from you is plain as day.

When you get upstairs Sirius is already asleep, and he turns away from you when you reach out to touch his arm. "Do you love me, Padfoot?" you ask him, the way you used to when you were seventeen, when he used to respond by pouncing on you and devouring you whole, and that was all the proof you needed. Now, he doesn't say anything at all. You lie on your back and stare at the ceiling, the repellent, lecherous, and _tempting_ spectre of Severus Snape alive in your mind.

No._ You can't_.

~~~~~

 

The third time… _fuck_. It is done. You are damned now.

"Come _on_, Padfoot," you begged, back when there was still time to save yourself, "just go get the Wolfsbane, all right? I'm not in a Snape sort of mood today."

"Oh, and I am?" he fired back.

"You're the one complaining about being stuck in this house!" An angry glint appeared in his eyes, and you knew you shouldn't have said that. You shouldn't have asked him to do this at all; what's the matter with you? It's much too dangerous, and how would you feel if he got caught, just because you couldn't trust yourself to be alone with Snape for five bloody minutes?

"And you think a visit to that fucking _dungeon_ is just what I need? Are you _insane?_ The first thing he'll do is tell Albus I was there, and then I'll be lucky not to find myself chained to my mother's stupid fucking portrait for the next ten years!"

"Come on," you said again, even though you knew he was right. You pushed away the sensation of Snape's fingers against your bare chest and trained pleading eyes on Sirius, feeling like the lowest form of humanity for daring to risk his freedom, just because you were quite certain you would not be able to keep your cock in your trousers if you went to that dungeon.

"Moony." He addressed you like you were a small child. "Snape's a fucking _arsehole_, all right? You could always handle him, but not me. I can't guarantee I won't kill the greasy bat if I go over there." He turned away and snarled, as if every teenage memory he had of Snape was coursing through his mind at once.

You tried one more time, desperate to avoid Hogwarts at any cost. "I'll make it worth your while," you said in as seductive a voice as you could manage, but he hasn't taken that bait in a long time.

He sighed and gave you a weak smile, reaching out from too far away to hook his fingers into your belt. "You know I'd leave this house at the drop of a hat if I could, Moony, but not for _Snape_. If Harry needed me, sure, but Snape? No bloody way."

You pulled him close then. "_I_ need you," you reminded him, touching your forehead to his, and he laughed to cover his discomfort.

"Oh, I know, Moony; I need you, too. We'll always have each other, right?" He pulled back and looked into your eyes with the puppy dog's earnestness and the freed prisoner's silent plea for understanding, and you nodded.

"Yeah, Padfoot. Always."

So, you have to go to Hogwarts to get the Wolfsbane. You did your best – you _tried_ to avoid it, didn't you? _Didn't you?_ It's not your fault. None of what happens there is your fault.

Your plan is to get in and out as quickly as possible. _No lingering_. Lingering only leads to temptation – to thumbs on lips, to fingers on throats, and to that thrumming need you are not supposed to feel. Go in, drink the potion, get out.

But he has a different plan. "Have you changed your mind yet?" he drawls as you walk in the door, and you freeze.

"Wolfsbane, please," you mutter, not meeting his eyes.

He rises from his desk and strolls over to a small, simmering cauldron on a nearby work table and fills a goblet, taking as long as possible to do it. You can feel your resolve slipping away as you watch him dip his ladle into the cauldron and pour the scoopful into the goblet. _Go in, drink the potion, get out_, your brain repeats on a frantic loop. The first two are almost done – now just drink the damned stuff and get out.

You forget to remind yourself that you must not, under any circumstances, let him touch you.

He brings you the goblet, as requested, but does not stop a respectful distance away from you like a colleague should. You back up against the door to escape him, but he comes closer still. He places his free hand on the wall beside your head and leans in to whisper in your ear. "_As you wish_."

He pauses a moment, his breath warm against your ear, your neck, and then he hands you the goblet without backing away. You grab it with trembling hands and it sloshes over the edge, but you ignore that and drink quickly._ Go in, drink the potion, get out_. You repeat your desperate mantra.

You drink and drink, your throat working to down every drop of the vile concoction, your eyelids lowered to avoid looking at him. He has no goblet to hold, however, and you suddenly remember something about idle hands and devil's work as a finger falls to the hollow of your throat. You shiver but continue to swallow the potion, not trusting what your lips will do of their own accord, the second they aren't fastened to this goblet.

His finger has turned into three, light tips running down the centre of your chest from collarbone to navel, and you are so busy swallowing, and panicking, that you don't hear the words he whispers. When you feel the cool dungeon air on your bare skin, you pull the cup away at last and look down, startled, to find your shirt open and that hand flat against your chest.

He is clever; he knows that lips are too dangerous, that he could lose himself in lips, and that one should never start with lips.

Instead, he settles for lowering his head and clamping his mouth to your neck, your collarbone, under your shirt to your bare shoulder, and you are lost. You drop the goblet to the stone floor with a loud _clank_ and pull his head to your skin in one rough movement, your eyes squeezing closed as all the dormant nerves of your body catch fire under his lips.

His arms fly up like barricades on either side of you as his body presses into you, hard with unmistakable need. There is no escape; there is nothing to do but press back, and you do – _oh god_, you do, with your hands in his hair and your hips arched to his. You want him so badly – here, now, naked and writhing underneath you on that stone floor, and your brain whirs to life with every dirty fantasy Sirius hasn't been able to fulfill since you were twenty years old.

His arms fall away, his mouth continuing its exploration of your chest, and some distant part of your brain breaks through to replace the fantasy with logic – _push him away, get out of here, now now now…_

But all you hear is the last three words on a loop, because those hands have unfastened your trousers and no one has touched you in days, months, years, and when he does, when his fingers brush over you, an insistent sweep up your cock that threatens to undo you right then and there, you really do come to your senses and shove him away from you, as hard as you can.

The dungeon falls quiet, and you become aware that you are breathing too hard, too loudly, that your hands are shaking, and that your eyes are still closed. _Don't open them_, you warn yourself. _Just fasten your fucking trousers and walk out the door_. But no one has ever accused you of being strong-willed, or resolute. You open your eyes.

He is watching you, as usual, from three paces away, and he is doing something else, you notice now: he is unbuttoning his own shirt and letting it fall open, his eyes never leaving you, and you despise the way your breath quickens and your cock pounds at the sight of his bare chest. You want to rip the rest of his clothes off; you want to wipe that smirk off his face; you want to fuck him so hard he'll regret ever pushing you like this.

"I'm with someone else," you blurt out instead, and a flicker of amusement passes over his face.

"Really?" he drawls. "I hadn't noticed."

"Fuck you! What's that supposed to mean?"

He shrugs. "How is someone else working out for you, then?"

His words impale you like a hot skewer and your eyes narrow. "Just _fine_, Snape." He thinks you're soft, that he can manipulate you and get you to admit that your needs aren't being met at home. You will show him he's wrong. You _have_ to show him he's wrong.

You watch each other in silence for several slow, agonising seconds before he speaks again, his voice low and deliberate. "I don't care about him. I want you."

A jolt of pure lust shoots down your spine and straight to your cock at that, and you can't believe your traitorous body is responding this way. He does not affect you; _desire_ is not a word you can ever associate with this man, and you search your mind for your mantra - _go in, drink the potion, get out_. Check, check – Out. Right.

You intend to turn on your heel and reach for the door handle, but instead you do not turn anywhere near the direction of the door. You collide with the soft fabric of his clothes, his bare chest against yours, his warm lips on yours, his insistent hands covering your body with teasing touches. You realise with stunned horror that you have launched yourself directly into his arms, and now your mouth is on his and hot fire is teasing your tongue, and if you let go you will sink through the floor and straight into the flames of hell, so you grab his shoulders and hold on with furious need.

He tears at your trousers and accomplishes what you interrupted moments earlier, and as his hand wraps around your aching cock, you hate your life, hate him, hate Grimmauld Place, _hate yourself_ because you are straining into the fist of Severus fucking _Snape_, groaning into his mouth and bruising his shoulders with your grip, and you couldn't leave now if a hippogriff showed up to claw your eyes out.

It is at once happening in sickening clarity, and shrouded in the mist of denial clouding your mind. Your hands move to cradle his head and pull him closer, the kiss a fevered rush of every taboo desire you've ever had, of back alleys and locker rooms and trysts in the Forbidden Forest, tree bark rough against your back as other mouths plundered yours like this in your dreams, whispering to you afterwards that your secret was safe, that _no one would ever know_ –

– except that you are thirty-five years old now and fantasies are one thing, but this is not what men like you _do_, and you have a partner at home waiting for you and oh – that mouth that tongue -_stop_\- that voice -_stop_\- that hand – _stop he needs me I love him but I want you so fucking badly _–

It's too late, you can't stop, and the pressure builds throughout your body as the white noise in your mind blocks out your doubts. He grips you hard, one last time, and you groan deep in your throat when you come in his hand, because nothing has ever felt so good and so destroying at the same time, and as he pulls your fidelity clear out of your body, your fingers dig into his neck and your moans into his mouth are shame and self-loathing, not pleasure, never pleasure. You have cause to wonder if this is the den of Lucifer, how you will ever get out now that you've tasted forbidden fruit.

~~~~~

 

The fourth time, he slips a piece of parchment into your pocket as he brushes by you at the kitchen door, another meeting about to begin. You sit next to Sirius and keep your hand on his thigh under the table. He grins at you and doesn't make you move it, but he doesn't encourage it, either.

You slip the note out of your pocket as you're shuffling some parchment on your lap, hiding it among the other papers. When it's safe, you open it.

  
_You owe me one_.

 

You almost laugh, until you realise it's not funny – and that you want nothing more than to pay off your debts right that second, under that kitchen table on your hands and knees, with his cock in your mouth and that maddening calm of his at your mercy.

"Moony?"

You jerk your head up.

"Dropped your parchment," Sirius whispers, pointing to the floor, then turning an oblivious eye back to Albus.

Suddenly you're angry, you're furious, you can't believe he's sitting there so casually when you're being torn apart, and later, when the two of you are alone upstairs, you're more insistent with him than usual.

You climb into bed on top of him and plant soft kisses along his jaw line, down his neck, across his bare torso. He places tentative hands on your back, but otherwise lies still. You trace his tattoos with your tongue, pausing at his navel to dip inside, tasting him, drinking in the scent of everything you used to share, and it's just like you remember and more, then you chance a finger inside the waistband of his pyjama bottoms, searching… to no avail. Glancing up at him, you see his eyes shut tight, and now notice his hands gripping your back like a corpse in rigor mortis. You grimace, but are determined; you cannot think about what you might do – about who you might go to – if he doesn't respond to you tonight.

You work your way back up his body, paying it consistent but gentle attention, murmuring your devotion to him until you reach his mouth and lean in for a kiss, your hips on his as you straddle him. He responds like a snail out of the starting gate, his lips cold and unmoving at first, then opening under your tongue's coaxing. He lets you in, his body still rigid underneath you, and you can't help but wonder why you're bothering.

_We're finished_, a small voice tells you in the back of your head. _It's over. We don't love each other, we don't respond to each other, and it's time to call it quits_.

You deepen the kiss in an effort to drown out that nagging voice, dragging your hips up to grind into his with more insistence. He allows this for another second, but then pushes you away with a violence reminiscent of his nightmares, when he wakes frantic and twitching in the middle of the night, kicking at you as though the very touch of the sheets, never mind your body beside his, makes him want to crawl out of his own skin.

"Just… stop!" he barks, his face flooding with shame as he climbs off the bed and heads over to the window, hiding in the shadows there. The room is filled with an oppressive silence for a long moment before he speaks again. "Look, why can't we just–" He stops and lets out a howl of frustration, slamming his fist down on the window sill before turning towards the door. "I'm going to check on Buckbeak," he mutters, not looking at you, and your eyes widen.

That's it. If he doesn't want you, why is he keeping you chained like this? "You care more about that hippogriff than you do about me," you hiss, grabbing a robe off the floor and striding across the room. You beat him to the door, pushing him out of the way and slamming it behind you when you leave.

You know exactly where you're going and why, but if you admit it to yourself your head might explode, so you don't. You just walk, then Apparate, then walk some more. You arrive and he lets you in, and you fling his stupid note in his face and drop to your knees, pulling his trousers open and his cock out, clutching his hips and taking him into your mouth with a need borne either of anger or desire, you're not sure which. He's not hard yet, but you don't care; you need it _now_, and anyway, he will be. He's not Sirius.

He doesn't speak, thank god, but he falls back against his desk and tangles his fingers in your hair, pushing your face in just a bit too hard, but you like it that way. Better than being pushed in the other direction.

You relish the feel of him in your mouth – the weight, the length, the smooth surface. He tastes just like he should, just like you want him to taste, and you inhale deeply as he thrusts between your lips with greater urgency. It's just sex, you remind yourself, and sex doesn't mean anything – not the absence of love if it's gone, not the presence of love it it's there. Love and sex are like a hand and a glove, you figure as your jaw starts to ache: sometimes they go together, if you're cold, or there's a sale on leather goods, but for the most part, they get on just fine independent of one another.

He stiffens and you feel the pulses of his orgasm fill your mouth, a baritone groan on his lips, and as your throat works to swallow him and your own cock pounds with desire, you're confused for a moment about which is the hand in your life, and which is the glove.

But half an hour later it's clear, as you arrive back at your closed bedroom door with the taste of treachery on your lips. You start to push the door open but stop, then rush down the hall to the shower, scrubbing your lips until they're chafed and the water has run cold.

You barely remember to put a robe over your shoulders as you crawl back to the bedroom, cold and aching, and slide in beside him. You don't care if he's asleep; you pull him close and wrap your arms around him, burying your face in his hair and whispering to him in a quavering voice, _"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry…"  
_  
He's still for a moment, but then lets himself fall into your embrace. "I'm trying, Moony, you know I am…"

"Shh," you whisper. "I know, I know, I'm sorry."

~~~~~

 

After that, you say no. His lingering after meetings doesn't sway you. "Hey, stick around," you say to Sirius. "Help me clean up." You shoo Molly away and settle in at the sink, teasing him about leaving smears on the plates even when washing them with magic, and he laughs – a real laugh, one you haven't heard in god knows how long.

You glance over your shoulder at the black shadow in the doorway and raise your voice, sharpen your banter, place your hand on Sirius's back, stroking it like a possession. You've learned to pick out the distinctive sound of Snape's rising, the cadence of his gait and the rustle of his robes as he whirls around to leave. But if Sirius has ever noticed, he hasn't said anything.

In the night he turns to you, shy with longing, and kisses you like he used to. He is so delicate still, but _fuck_, it's good, it's like before, it takes you back to autumn days under the Quidditch stands, to sunlight on the shore of the Lake, each of you leaning back on your elbows and trying to pluck blades of grass with your bare toes, gazing at each other with teenage infatuation. His lips are soft and warm again, and when he touches you, you think there might be a spell contained in those tentative fingers capable of erasing the past fifteen years.

"You… don't have to do this," you manage, tearing your lips away. He blinks at you, grey eyes catching the dim light in the room, then reaches down and peels both of your pyjama bottoms off. He hovers over you, light fingertips exploring every surface until your head falls back to the pillow in defeat.

"Yes, I do," he tells you, and you aren't sure what he means, but the last thing you want to do right now is fight with him, so you surrender to him and let him find his rhythm again, let him relearn your body, let him set his own pace. You let him have you – everything he wants, everything you can give, and it's nice. Safe. Comfortable.

So why, oh god _why_, do you wish it was none of those things? Why do you want to replace 'nice' with _burning_, 'safe' with _forbidden_, 'comfortable' with _shattering_? And why do you see a robe as black as deception, and feel fingertips the texture of lies, even as you rediscover your life's great love?

~~~~~

 

The fifth time, you only go to see if you can break the spell. He has bewitched you, Charmed you, put some Dark and illegal aphrodisiac in your Wolfsbane – that must be the explanation. That's the only possible way that Sirius could be opening up to you again at the exact moment your dreams are haunted by a stone cold floor against your knees and a poisonous salt in your mouth.

"I knew you'd be back," he says with a satisfied smirk as you enter the dungeons, but you refuse to let his voice sway you; you are determined that he not get the upper hand.

"You have to stop this," you warn, raising a finger to point in his face, then quickly dropping it back to your side when you see how much it shakes.

"Stop what?" He is all silky innocence, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Everything!" you shout. "The way you look at me, the way you talk to me, the way–" You curse and look away.

He steps towards you. "Yes?"

"The way you're ruining my relationship," you finish, feeling ill.

"I am doing no such thing," he responds with cool detachment. "Nor," he adds, taking another step forward, "am I doing anything you don't want me to do."

You glare at him. "Yes, you are."

He's too close again; how does he do this? How does he manage to move from the other side of the room without you noticing, and when did his lips start nibbling on your ear and down to your neck while you remained oblivious? "_No_," you protest, as his hands grip your waistband. "This isn't right."

His mouth pauses on your neck, then he pushes you away from him, his arms hanging in the air in front of him a second too long, for dramatic effect. "Then get out of here," he snarls. "Go back to doing what's _right_. Go back to changing that invalid's diapers and wanking yourself to sleep every night. Go back to _your perfect life_."

You take a deep breath and start towards the door, your face twisted in pain and fury. Just make it through the door and it will all be over, you tell yourself. Just make it through the door… But life is never that simple. _Your _life isn't, at least. "You think a life with _you_ would be any better?" you ask, turning and fixing him with an icy glare.

"I never offered you a life with me."

"Then what the fuck are you offering?" you demand. "I asked you before, and you didn't answer me: _what do you want from me_?"

A strange look flits across his face, and he stares at you. "I thought that was obvious," he says. "I want to squire you away from my childhood enemy, of course."

You sigh. "I should have known not to expect a straight answer from you."

"Fine," he calls as you reach for the door handle. "You intrigue me. I want to see what you look like when you lose control."

You grimace, turning back to him. "You've seen that," you remind him.

"I want more."

"No."

His eyes gleam. "So do you, if you'd admit it."

"No."

"What would you look like, Remus?"

"_No_."

"Would you close your eyes to pretend it's someone else, or would you leave them open to know it's me?"

"Stop it."

"Would you grab onto the sheets, or onto me? Or maybe the headboard… maybe you would need that cool iron in your fists, when it all got to be too much…"

"This will _never _happen."

He ignores you. "Would you rather be on your back, or up on your hands and knees?"

"Fuck you."

"Oh, now those are the magic words, aren't they? Come to bed with me."

"No, oh god, _no_."

"Come with me - admit to yourself that you want me."

"Stop this – I _can't_."

"Admit that he doesn't give you what you want."

"No. No. He does. _He does_." You bite your lip and cling with desperation to all the promises you ever made to Sirius, but as you stare at the man in front of you, beckoning you towards his bedroom, you can barely even remember what Sirius looks like.

"Come to _me_, then. Tonight."

You shake your head.

That silky voice is inexorable. "_Remus._ Show me."

You look up at him, and pause.

"_You can_."

Slowly, you nod.

 

~~~~~

 

You've lost track of how many times now. One, five, twenty, a hundred – it doesn't matter. It's never the same twice, it's never routine, and it's never comfortable. There was a bed that first night, when he had you on your back in minutes, and you clawed at his skin with shocking desire as he took you, but there isn't always. It's nothing like it is at home, where you take your socks off and place your folded trousers on the shelf in the closet, and crawl in beside a lover who may as well be your brother for all he excites you anymore.

Snape never pecks you on the cheek, or smiles when you enter the room, or swallows you in fraternal bear hugs. No, Snape studies you – strips you naked and scrutinises you body and soul, and you allow it because when he finally understands, when he stops staring because he's figured out exactly what you want that day, you know that you will not emerge from the experience the same man.

He's changing you, a little bit at a time. Every time you leave that dungeon with your clothes strewn haphazardly over your limbs, dazed and fucked and regretting that the guilt has faded almost to nothing, you're a different person. It's all happened so fast; you can't even remember how it started anymore. All you know is that you can't get enough of him – that all your initial doubts have long been licked away by that forked tongue, coaxed away by those idle hands, fucked away by that cock. All that's left is your ferocious need, your sudden insistence on dropping everything for a secret tryst with him.

It's difficult to find the right time – he is busy, and you can only make so many excuses to others for needing to see him. There are only so many full moons in a month, after all, and only so many doses of Wolfsbane you can convincingly swallow. The hour before Order meetings works best, as would-be attendees like yourself are scattered around town, and your arrival at the house coincides with theirs, so nobody asks you questions.

Well, Sirius asks sometimes. "Come on, where's he been sending you, Moony?" he'll say, his face lighting up in a smile when he sees you come through the door with the others.

"Oh, you know. Errands, mostly, and clerical stuff. Banks, and things."

"And they don't give you a hard time at places like that?" It's an innocent question, but it irritates you.

"No," you mutter. "I'm not a total outcast, you know." That's another lie, of course; you could no more walk into Gringott's these days than you could be elected Minister of Magic, and if he bothered to pay any real attention to you, he would know that. Still, a part of you is glad he doesn't question it.

"I didn't mean- just, never mind. I'm glad you have things to do." He watches you, and for the most part you believe he's sincere, but there's a nagging part of you that can't help but flash back to a similar time, fifteen years earlier, when he would say things like that to you one minute, and in the next lean over to whisper to James that you must be the mole in the Order, with your strange disappearances and evasive answers.

The memory makes you resent him a little – and a little more the next day, and a little bit more the next, so that morning in the spring, when he surprises you in the shower, stepping in behind you with a predatory look on his face and insistent hands on your body, you turn and kiss him chastely on the lips, and curse whatever gods have decided that they would wait until _now_ to make him want you again. You push him away with the palm of your hand on his chest, mumbling about being in a hurry, and drop your head back under the spray, closing your eyes and willing away your conscience.

_Why_ does he have to be improving? You're happy to see it, really you are. Azkaban stole so much from him, and you desperately want him to be able to reclaim at least some of his youthful passion for life. If only that vigour wouldn't manifest itself in his newfound sex drive quite so often; if only his healing didn't involve a tongue in your ear when you're trying to sleep, or a prowling hand between your thighs when you're trying to dream about someone else.

And as flowers bloom outside and sunshine that doesn't reach through those dungeon walls announces a new day, _someone else_ rides you deep and slow, crooning filthy words in your ear until you're a mess of sensation, and you don't care what season it is, or what day it is, or even how long you've been here and how much longer you have until you need to leave. All you know is the adrenaline rush of your lies, and the way that momentum building in your body with his every battering thrust against your principles, your morals, your promises feels so… fucking… _good_.

~~~~~

 

But you become careless, neglecting to fix your torn clothing, or apply a healing potion to the bruises on your neck and thighs, or Vanish the strands of black hair on your robes that are too long and too coarse to belong to Sirius. Your excuses weaken, too. It used to be meetings with Albus, or missions to the other werewolves, or night watch at the Ministry, but lately it's just errands, or groceries, or _'just got some stuff to do – back in a bit.'  
_  
You're too busy anticipating what's coming to notice the curious looks Sirius gives you as you leave. There are other things on your mind by then, like what it will be like this time, and what he'll want from you – where your mouth will be in twenty minutes, or your hands; whether he'll want you over his desk or against the bookshelf, the raised, gilded letters on the spine of Hawthorne or Flaubert pressing into your forehead as he takes you; how many times he'll be able to wring that desperate groan of release from you today, in the two hours before the meeting. Oh yes, you have much more on your mind than keeping track of Sirius's _looks_.

But your negligence will be your undoing, and that will be why later, you will remember the last time so well, with such clarity – because you were already thinking about his body, imagining the way his back arches against you when he comes, searing the image of your mutual release into your mind before it even happened. Yes, you were already ignoring Sirius's face, the one that should have told you he knew what you were doing.

It's your turn that day – you've made it yours. You stride into that dungeon and slam the door behind you, shoving Snape onto the bed before he can do anything about it, but he doesn't want to do anything about it, you know that much by now. He wants you like this – like he said that first night, _"I want to see what you look like when you lose control"_ – and fucking hell, he's seen it. He's the only one who's seen it; he's the only one you've allowed to see it.

Today you must know, through some miracle of blind intuition, that this is your last chance, because you've now flung away whatever restraint you had left like a cheap, unwanted gift, and enjoyed its audible _smash_. You clutch his hips too hard, bruising him, marking him as yours, and wondering when you ever started thinking of him as _yours_, and when you _stopped_ thinking of Sirius that way. But if you're hurting him he doesn't say; he inhales sharply and groans together with you, moving in sync with you, letting your fingers scratch like claws down his back and your thrumming body claim his.

You leave with a sly smile on your lips and a pleasant tingling up your spine, and it must have given you all sorts of confidence you didn't know you had, because after the meeting you catch Snape's eye and he lingers again, like he used to. He's been careful not to, not since the two of you started fucking like wild beasts in the afternoons, but tonight he does. It must have affected him, too, the intensity of that day, and he leans against the counter, watching you as the others file out of the kitchen.

You let the door swing closed when they're gone, pausing a moment to let your gaze fall down his body and make sure he knows you're looking, and then you step towards him and press your body into his. He's backed into the counter and winces for a brief second, before his eyes take on that glint of arousal you know so well, and he pushes back into you. You pin his hands to the counter and devour his neck, feeling his hair fall back as he lifts his head to give you better access.

After a moment you feel his head straighten and he tenses, but this doesn't dissuade you from continuing your exploration of his collarbone, diving under his shirt collar and licking a trail up to nibble on his ear. He moans and you feel his hand in your hair, pulling you in closer.

"Do you want me?" he asks in a low voice, and you moan in reply, grinding against him. "Mm." That honeyed voice in your ear makes your heart pound. "Did you like fucking me this afternoon?"

You pause, panting. "You know I did," you answer, your head still buried in his neck, your fists clenching the folds of his robes.

"Was it better than the first time I fucked you, _six months ago_?" He draws out the last three words, and you raise your head to nuzzle his jaw.

"Just as good," you murmur, and he straightens up a bit more. You look up at him again to find an odd smile twisting his lips, his eyes on something over your shoulder, and you freeze.

_No_.

But there it is – that moment when you know something more dreadful than death itself has happened, when you know it in the shards of ice forming in your veins, in the gasp of horror dead on your lips; when you know without being told that you must not, under any circumstances, turn around.

If you turn around, you will see him, and if you see him, it will be true. As long as you stay where you are, your eyes squeezed shut, your mind in full denial, then what you now know to be the crushing truth _cannot_ be happening. _A Time-Turner_, you think desperately through the mud occluding your brain; _I need four minutes back – just four! Everything will be all right if I can just go back four minutes…_

You're holding onto Snape's robes; he's pressed against the counter; the entire scene is still on full display, and now you don't even know how long it's been. He pushes you away then, one hand around the back of your neck. His eyes remain pinned to that point across the room, behind you, as he guides you to his lips for a wet, vulgar kiss. You jerk away a moment too late, and you are clumsy in your haste to get clear of him, flinching and turning your head around before you are ready.

The ice in your blood expands and cracks, tearing your insides apart and spilling out over the kitchen floor as you gasp for air, shaking your head back and forth in rhythmic denial. "No," you whisper. "No no no _no_… It's not… _Please_, no…"

But Sirius is gripping the door frame as though letting go will kill him, his lips pressed together, his face white as a ghost against his dark eyes. _His eyes…_

"No no no no no," you continue to chant, your breathing shallow.

…his eyes, those vacant fucking eyes, like the day he returned to this house for the first time after twelve years in prison and another year on the run. Those lost eyes, like a puppy abandoned by a family that bought him on an impulse for their kid for Christmas, and had no trouble getting rid of him when the kid moved on to building Lego castles. Those dead eyes, watching the one person who he loved unconditionally, the one person who pledged eternal devotion to him in return, stab him in the back with his worst enemy's blade.

_The enemy_. You force yourself to glance back at Snape, and the ice in your veins leaves you numb as you take in the gloating sneer on his face. He then sweeps past you but pauses in the doorway, leaning close to Sirius, who is still staring at you with those tombstone eyes.

"You have excellent taste, Black, I'll give you that," he purrs, drawing out every syllable. "He really is a damn good fuck."

Sirius closes his eyes. "This is it, then," he manages. "Your version of the Killing Curse."

When Snape laughs, you feel a shudder like poison ooze down your spine. "Oh no, Black. This is much more satisfying than killing you."

~~~~~

 

A bit of screaming might have done him good. Yelling at you and pounding his fists and just plain _screaming_ about what a filthy, lying, cheating, _bastard_ you are might at least have cut through the oppressive silence that fell on the house after that night. You shouldn't be here, and you know it, but where can you go? You grab a pillow and head to the sofa in the library, but you don't sleep for days. He's locked himself upstairs and must be conjuring food from the kitchen, or else dead of starvation behind the door.

You need some new clothes from the bedroom; you use a spell every night to clean the ones you're wearing, but you can't do that forever. And anyway, it's just getting embarrassing – Tonks and Kingsley have seen the makeshift bed in the library, have frowned at your wrinkled trousers, and have avoided asking you what the hell happened.

But still no screaming, and this is what upsets you the most. You want him to be angry with you; you _need_ him to react. Wasn't that what caused this sorry mess in the first place – his failure to react to anything you said or did anymore? You can't believe he's indifferent to this; you can't believe he's up there, _failing_ to react. You know he's capable of it; hell, you've heard the awful things he shouts at his mother's portrait, for one, not to mention everyone else who crosses his path on the wrong day of the week.

You soon realise, however, that his throat is too dry to scream at you, and that he doesn't have the strength. Would you, if you saw what he did? And anyway, has Sirius ever told you _how he feels_, about anything? No. He's always just shown you – and that's what he's doing now. There's no point in yelling about what he doesn't understand, is there? There's no point in him shouting at you that he's hurt, disappointed, broken, or whatever it is he feels, is there? He expects you to know that. He expects you to yell at yourself, so that he doesn't have to.

And you do, oh yes – when you've folded your body into its cramped position on the sofa for the night, staring at blackness and listening to dust mites, all you see is Snape's sneer of triumph that day, and all you hear is your own miserable, naive voice rejecting it when he told you the truth – _"I should have known not to expect a straight answer from you"_ – and you feel like a piece of an iceberg, broken off and now drifting through frigid waters, with no way of getting back again.

~~~~~

 

The deceiving bastard, as you've taken to calling him in your head, does not contact you until eight days later, when his head materialises in your fireplace, his lips set in a thin line. When you look up from the book you haven't been reading and see him, you think you might be sick. He is all business, as though nothing ever happened between you, and he is so convincing, you almost believe nothing ever did.

"Tell me why you did this," you ask him before you can stop yourself.

He pauses, then surprises you by not denying he _did_ anything at all. "You know why."

"One night is enough for revenge," you point out. It had to be about more than that; it _had_ to be. You need to know you threw away your life with Sirius – a good life, a safe life – for a reason. You don't know how you are going to deal with this, and how you are ever going to forgive yourself, if there isn't a reason.

His eyes glare at you from out of the blazing hearth, and you are shocked to see him at a loss for words. That's it, then – you've hit on it. He knows one night would have been enough; he knows he only let you come back because of his own weakness, his own desire. In a twisted sort of way, you have won.

He clears his throat then and continues speaking, as if you never interrupted. He tells you that he has had a strange message from Harry, and that he thinks the idiot boy is going to try to get into the Department of Mysteries.

You suddenly can't spare a thought for your own wretched life at those words, and you race upstairs to yell at Sirius to get his sulking arse down to the fireplace, because Harry's in danger.

Thankfully, the bedroom door flies open for the first time in eight days, and he emerges looking much like he did that night in the Shrieking Shack two years ago, when you saw him for the first time since Azkaban – when his wild eyes couldn't quite focus on you, couldn't quite believe that you were speaking to him, and that you returned to his life. You realise with a turn of your stomach that you've put him back in prison – right back to being an innocent man among a sea of traitors.

He listens to Snape's story with his arms folded over his chest, his haggard face trained on that beaked nose, those thin lips, that greasy hair. Is he even listening, you wonder, or is he too busy scrutinising that face, paralysed with visions of your cock in that mouth, those lips on your back, that hair falling across your chest, as he pulled your naked body to his with one hand, crushing Sirius's heart to a pulp in the other?

Or, perhaps, it's you who is thinking all of that.

You're jolted back to the present by the screaming. Here it is, then – at last he's angry. It's for the best, you think, that he get his emotions out, but you wince nonetheless at the vitriol he spits forth, peppered with profanities you've never even heard before. He unleashes a stream of fiery words at Snape, and you, that he must have been rehearsing upstairs all that week, and you cover your face with your hand, peeking through your fingers to note that Snape just looks bored.

"Sirius," you begin, stepping forward after a moment to place a hand on his arm, thinking this has gone on long enough, but he throws you off with a violent jerk.

"Fuck off," he tells you, then turns back to Snape. He thinks this is a ploy to get him out of the house, it seems, and to get Snape into your bed – _his_ bed. Snape glares at him and reminds him that getting you into bed is no longer on his to-do list, having already accomplished it with such resounding success.

Sirius closes his eyes at that and you bite your lip, as Snape tells you with cool detachment to contact the others and get to the Ministry immediately; he promises to check the grounds for Harry as soon as that Umbridge woman is out of the way, and Sirius looks at him again, having lost the ability to protest. You nod like a marionette and turn to Sirius, but he shoves you away with both hands to your chest, knocking you against the wall. For a split second you think he wants to _fight_ you, but an instant later he's striding from the room.  
**  
**You follow him through the front foyer and grab his arm. "We _have _to talk about this," you plead, devastated by the sadness in his eyes.

"No, we don't," he says flatly, "and if you have any allegiances left in this world, they'll be to Harry." He shakes himself free of you and checks his pockets for his wand. "He could be surrounded by Death Eaters right now, and you want to talk about why you can't keep your prick in your trousers? Fuck you."

You deserve that, but it still hurts. "Harry." You nod. "All right, let's go. But promise me we'll talk tonight."

He won't look at you.

"Padfoot – _promise_ me."

He raises his eyes to you after a pause, and the gravity of your betrayal blazes through you. At last, he nods. "All right, Moony. We'll talk tonight."

~~~~~

 

When you were both a lot younger, less tired, and less cynical, you used to ride with him on that stupid motorcycle he had. It was like no feeling you'd ever experienced before, and you hated and loved it at the same time. It was nothing like flying on a broomstick – no, this was faster, more powerful, and much more addictive. You would close your eyes and grip him around the chest, so hard that he would laugh and turn his head to remind you that if you were afraid of crashing, suffocating the driver wasn't the best way to ensure a safe landing. So you would loosen your arms a little, but not much – only half of it was for safety anyway; the other half was just your need to get closer to him.

He'd take you higher and higher, shrouded in invisibility and feeling lighter than air, and you wondered if this was why Muggles put so much stock in heaven. You opened your lungs and let the night air of youth and freedom fill you, your fingers and toes tingling with fear and excitement and that intoxicating feeling of just _being with him_, of forgetting everyone else, everything else – your broken bones, your unemployment, your looming war – and just soaring through a world that was open only to the two of you.

There was such trust in those rides – trust, and love, and a loyalty to each other that you thought could never be broken, a feeling that if you could share that sky, you could share a life, share everything, and what did you know – you were nineteen years old and thought the world rotated on his command.

On the way down, he would always take his time, his descent running lazy circles through the clouds like his hands did on your skin at night, and he knew that's what it reminded you of, and he did it to turn you on. He did it to hear you moan in his ear and nip at the back of his neck, your fingers slipping under his jacket and t-shirt to flick against his nipples and draw lines down his chest. He brought the bike down lower, lower, and you pushed your hips forward behind him, pulling him into you and taking all the friction you could from him, as the wind breathed against your cheek.

He was never able to stand much of this, and would soon hasten his descent, so that it wasn't more than five minutes before you had touched back to earth, the engine still purring, and he had thrown you down on your back in the grass, pressing into you hard and deep, while murmuring filth in your ear about pistons and throttles and _how fucking high_ he was going to take you.

Of all your memories of him, this is the one that steamrolls across your mind when you watch, with paralysed horror, as he falls through that veil. You suddenly feel something you haven't felt in fifteen years – the rough grass against your back and the patient humming of that motorbike in your head, drowning out all other sounds and sensations around you. There's no screaming, no maniacal laughter, and no jets of light, red or green – there's just the two of you, rutting in an abandoned field, his body pressed between your legs like that motorbike had been, hard and thrumming and exactly what you needed to make you feel alive.

As the sounds around you filter back into your consciousness, like someone turning up the volume you muted, you understand that he loved you all his life, and that he's died knowing that when he needed you the most, you threw that love back in his face like poison, like engine fluid, like yolk.

You have no idea where you conjure the strength, or the facility of your limbs, to grab Harry before he follows, particularly when following seems like such a wonderful idea. You hope James has seen what you did, and you hope he will tell Sirius, now that you can't, that you're sorry, you're sorry, you're so… fucking… _sorry_.

~~~~~

 

"Lupin."

The voice slices through you and you pause on the staircase, the glassy eyes of a dozen dead house-elves watching you. You don't turn around. What would be the point? There's nothing, and no one, left worth turning around for.

He clears his throat but doesn't speak. You can feel his eyes on you, that heavy weight of his gaze that used to send shivers down your spine whenever he trained it on you. Now, even without turning around to face it, the intensity of that stare leaves you feeling empty. You wonder what on earth he thinks he can say to you now to make any of this all right. He must be wondering the same thing, you figure, because he still hasn't spoken, and suddenly you don't even want to give him the chance.

You close your eyes. "Get out," you manage, and something in your tone must persuade him not to fuck with you, not anymore, because he obeys, and you continue up the stairs on legs that don't want to remember what it's like to be upright.

Standing in the doorway of Mrs. Black's old bedroom, you find yourself staring at the stupid hippogriff grooming itself against the far wall. It glares at you, aware that you have neglected to bow to it, and presumably debating whether or not it should claw your chest open for the insult. You stare back and hope it does. It knows what you've done, of course; it's always known. It will keep your secret, but it won't ever let you forget.

"I'm… sorry," you tell it, and it lifts its head to better appraise you, from its position of moral superiority. You realise that this beast loved Sirius more than you did – that it was more loyal to him than you were. And as you continue to stare at it, you come to understand that it has quite deliberately decided not to launch its talons into your flesh. It knows you want it, it knows you deserve it, and it has concluded that a better punishment for you is to make you live.

This is what it's like, then, to fall off the wall and break into a million pieces. And this is what it's like to look in a mirror and know that no one will ever be able to put you back together again.

 

-fin-

**Author's Note:**

> There is now art for this story! Thanks so much to [](http://aleoninc.livejournal.com/profile)[**aleoninc**](http://aleoninc.livejournal.com/) for drawing me [a scene from 'Cheat'](http://aleoninc.livejournal.com/21364.html) (PG-13).
> 
> The idea of sexual encounters proceeding through a 'first time,' 'second time,' 'third time,' motif is influenced here by [](http://fabularasa.livejournal.com/profile)[**fabularasa**](http://fabularasa.livejournal.com/)'s marvellous Snape/Black story, _Eight Times_.


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